Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: climatology – Page 27

Cybersecurity company Cybereason reveals that the actual price of a ransomware attack on a business includes much more than the ransom itself.

When choosing whether to comply and pay the demanded ransom to cyber attackers, there are many different considerations to have in mind. The latest report by Cybereason reveals that only one in two victims who paid ransom actually got their data back uncorrupted, and four out of five were eventually breached again by the same attackers.

According to Cybernews, the company’s researchers went over 1,008 IT professionals who all dealt with breachers at least once in the past two years and found that 84% chose to pay the ransom, averaging $1.4 million in the US. However, only 47% got their data and services back uncorrupted, so this doesn’t appear to have been the optimal strategy.

Read more | >

Understanding cloud patterns in our changing climate is essential to making accurate predictions about their impact on society and nature. Scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology published a study in the journal Science Advances that uses a high-resolution global climate model to understand how the clustering of clouds and storms impacts rainfall extremes in the tropics. They show that with rising temperatures, the severity of extreme precipitation events increases.

Extreme rainfall is one of the most damaging natural disasters costing human lives and causing billions in damage. Their frequency has been increasing over the last years due to the .

For several decades, scientists have been using computer models of the Earth’s climate to better understand the mechanisms behind these events and to predict future trends.

Read more | >

The search for habitable exoplanets involves looking for planets with similar conditions to the Earth, such as liquid water, a suitable temperature range and atmospheric conditions. One crucial factor is the planet’s position in the habitable zone, the region around a star where liquid water could potentially exist on the planet’s surface. NASA’s Kepler telescope, launched in 2009, revealed that 20–50% of visible stars may host such habitable Earth-sized rocky planets. However, the presence of liquid water alone does not guarantee a planet’s habitability. On Earth, carbon compounds such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and carbon monoxide (CO) played a crucial role in shaping the climate and biogeochemistry and could have contributed to the emergence of life.

Taking this into consideration, a recent study by Associate Professor Kazumi Ozaki from Tokyo Institute of Technology, along with Associate Researcher Yasuto Watanabe from The University of Tokyo, aims to expand the search for habitable planets. Published in the Astrophysical Journal(External site) on 10 January 2024, the researchers used atmospheric modeling to identify conditions that could result in a CO-rich atmosphere on Earth-like planets that orbit sun-like (F-, G-, and K-type) stars. This phenomenon, known as CO runaway, is suggested by atmospheric models to have possibly occurred in early planetary atmospheres, potentially favoring the emergence of life.

“The possibility of CO runaway is critical in resolving the fundamental problem regarding the origin of life on Earth because various organic compounds suitable for the prebiotic chemistry are more likely to form in a CO-rich atmosphere than in a CO2-rich atmosphere,” explains Dr. Ozaki.

Read more | >

Year 2023 face_with_colon_three

Recycling nutrients is essential for closing nutrient loops within a circular economy. Using locally available resources such as human excreta to produce bio-based recycling fertilizers can substitute mineral fertilizers and thereby promote environmentally friendly food production. To better understand the fertilizer potential and nitrogen value of human excreta, three novel and safe recycling products were evaluated in a field experiment. Two nitrified urine fertilizers (NUFs) and one fecal compost were applied alone or in combination, and compared against the commercial organic fertilizer vinasse. In addition, the uptake of pharmaceuticals was assessed for treatments with compost application. White cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata f. alba) was cultivated in plots in three different soil types (sand, loam or silt) treated with the fertilizers according to plant needs and mineral soil nitrogen content. The two NUFs resulted in marketable yields similar to those of vinasse in all soil types. Combining fecal compost with a NUF led to increased marketable yield compared to compost alone. The highest yield was recorded from the sandy soil, where vinasse and NUF treatments led to comparable yields, as expected in organic productions systems (up to 72 t ha−1). The cabbage yield and total aboveground fresh biomass followed the following trend in all soils: NUFs ∼ vinasse ≥ compost + NUF ≥ compost. Nitrogen uptake in the cabbage heads and total biomass was significantly higher in sand (69.5–144 kg ha−1) than loam (71.4–95.8 kg ha−1). All compost treatments alleviated the effect of soil type and resulted in comparable nitrogen uptake and yield in all soil types. Plant uptake of pharmaceuticals (Carbamazepin) was higher in sand than in loam, and concentration in the edible part was lower than in the outer leaves. In conclusion, NUF alone appears to be a promising successful fertilizer substitute in horticultural food production. The combined application of NUF and compost led to slightly lower crop yields, but may increase soil carbon content in the long term, promoting climate-friendly food production.

In view of a growing world population and the human alteration of nutrient cycles, including nitrogen (N) and phosphorus ℗ (Rockström et al., 2009), transforming food production is a major challenge of this century (Springmann et al., 2018). Both N and P are essential nutrients for healthy plant growth in crop production; however, their addition to synthetic fertilizers is currently organized in a linear economy. The Haber-Bosch process, used to generate plant-available N from its airborne unreactive form, is energy intensive, depending on fossil fuels such as natural gas, and associated with high greenhouse gas emissions (Wang et al., 2021). P is obtained from finite, depleting phosphate rock resources and its mining is increasingly more expensive and polluting (Desmidt et al., 2015). This background emphasize the need for significant improvements of nutrient management in agriculture and for alternative, circular N and P sources to achieve global food security (Gerten et al.

Read more | >

Norway boasts the highest electric vehicle adoption rate in the world. Some 82% of new car sales were EVs in Norway in 2023, according to the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV). In comparison, 7.6% of new car sales were electric in the U.S. last year, according to Kelley Blue Book estimates. In the world’s largest auto market, China, 24% of new car sales were EVs in 2023, according to the China Passenger Car Association.

“Our goal is that all new cars by 2025 will be zero-emission vehicles,” said Ragnhild Syrstad, the state secretary of the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment, “We think we’re going to reach that goal.”

The Norwegian government started incentivizing the purchase of EVs back in the 1990s with free parking, the use of bus lanes, no tolls and most importantly, no taxes on zero-emission vehicles. But it wasn’t until Tesla and other EV models became available about 10 years ago that sales started to take off, Syrstad said.

Read more | >

Recent research has discovered that, in contrast to earlier assumptions, substantial quantities of aerosol particles are generated across extensive regions of the West Siberian taiga during spring. These findings indicate that rising temperatures can greatly influence the climate due to this phenomenon.

Aerosol particles significantly contribute to the Earth’s cooling process. They can impact the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth’s surface either directly or indirectly by aiding in cloud formation. These particles originate from various gas molecules and are found all over the planet.

To understand the circumstances in which these particles are formed, researchers conduct measurements in various environments all over the world. For example, the Finnish flagship station SMEAR II has conducted measurements in the boreal forest for 25 years.

Read more | >

UCLA spinout Equatic has developed a carbon removal technology it believes can help the world meet its climate change goals — by converting CO2 in the ocean into seashell dust.

The challenge: To prevent the worst predicted effects of climate change, experts say we need to not only slash our carbon emissions, but also remove and permanently store some of the CO2 that’s already been released.

The ocean does this naturally: it already absorbs about 31% of human-made carbon emissions, but there’s a limit to the amount of CO2 that seawater can absorb before it starts to release the carbon back into the atmosphere. Absorbing CO2 from the air also causes ocean acidification, resulting in further environmental damage.

Read more | >

Researchers from Ohio State University have developed an innovative method to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the atmosphere. Powered by geothermal energy, the team’s method poses a climate-friendly alternative to traditional carbon capture technologies. It highlights the synergy between Direct Air Carbon Dioxide Capture (DACC) technologies and renewable energies from beneath the Earth’s surface.

The approach, named Direct Air CO2 Capture with CO2 Utilization and Storage (DACCUS), promises a significant decrease in atmospheric CO2 levels, a major contributor to global warming.

Climate change primarily results from increased CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere, largely due to human activities like burning fossil fuels for heat, electricity, and transportation.

Read more | >

A study, published in One Earth, is the first to analyze the interplay of electrification and hydrogen in EU climate neutrality scenarios at greater sectoral detail. The analysis shows higher potential for electrification and identifies a more confined deployment range for hydrogen-based energy than earlier studies.

“Previous research has shown that our power system can be transformed to renewable sources like wind and solar at low cost and low environmental impact. However, the next question is how this renewable electricity can be used to substitute in the buildings, industry and transport sectors. Our analysis shows that the direct use of electricity, for example, via and , is critical for a broad range of sectors, while the conversion of electricity to hydrogen is important only for few applications,” says Felix Schreyer, PIK scientist and lead author of the study.

Using the energy-economy model REMIND, PIK-scientists investigated plausible combinations of both strategies in EU energy system transformation pathways under different scenario assumptions.

Read more | >

A group of researchers have posed a fascinating — and downright mind bending — thought experiment: If a planet like Earth can be “alive,” can it also have a mind of its own?

The team published a paper exploring this question in the International Journal of Astrobiology. In it, they present the idea of “planetary intelligence,” which describes the collective knowledge and cognition of an entire planet.

Though it seems like something ripped off the screen of a Marvel movie, they believe that the concept might actually help us deal with global issues such as climate change, or even help us discover extraterrestrial life.

Read more | >